(The following story by Tim Mekeel appeared on the Lancaster New Era website on August 9, 2010.)
LANCASTER, Pa. — More trains plus faster trains continues to equal more riders at the Lancaster Amtrak station.
Amtrak ridership here exceeded 500,000 for the first time ever in the latest fiscal year, the state Department of Transportation announced Monday.
Ridership at the Lancaster Amtrak station hit a record 500,282 for the fiscal year that ended June 30, according to PennDOT.
That was up 1.8 percent from 491,384 in the prior fiscal year.
It also marked the eighth consecutive annual increase in ridership here, though the margins have gotten much narrower.
The Lancaster station is on Amtrak’s “Keystone Corridor,” the Harrisburg-Philadelphia line which also had a record year — 5.4 million riders.
PennDOT spokeswoman Erin Waters said the new statistics show a recent major upgrade of the corridor still is yielding benefits.
PennDOT, Amtrak and the Federal Transit Administration completed a $145 million overall of the line in 2006.
The six-year project added a third more trains, smoothed the ride and cut travel times without boosting fares.
The timing of the project couldn’t have been better.
After Amtrak service was improved, she said, traffic congestion worsened and gas prices rose.
That combination of factors has prompted more people to give the train a try, she said.
The Lancaster Amtrak station’s latest ridership is 35.9 percent above the 368,076 riders who traveled by train the year before the project’s completion.
“People are looking for alternatives,” Waters said.
Yet the rate of growth in ridership is slowing.
In the first two years following the upgrade, ridership at the Lancaster Amtrak station rose by more than 50,000 annually.
The latest rise at the McGovern Avenue station is a mere 9,000, perhaps a sign that the recession is restraining Amtrak’s progress.
Ridership at a station (or on the corridor) is defined as the number of people who board a train there plus the number who disembark there.
Mass-transit advocates are hoping that another major construction project invigorates the fading growth in ridership here.
That project is the $12 million renovation of the Lancaster Amtrak station, now under way.
The 81-year-old station is getting more parking and better passenger dropoff and pickup points, among other improvements.
Completion is set for September 2011.
Also sure to influence local ridership are two changes made by Amtrak in July to its local service.
The passenger rail service gave back nearly all of the savings in time achieved in 2006, but eliminated its higher midday fares.
Amtrak’s speediest trip between Lancaster and Philadelphia was slowed to 73 minutes from 63 minutes, effective last month.
Before the improvements enacted in the 2006 project, the Lancaster-Philadelphia ride lasted 76 minutes, according to newspaper files.
However, Amtrak also simplified its fare structure. It extended lower early-morning fares to throughout the day, eliminating higher midday fares.